


Why Britain Leads the World in Potions

by Asvel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:00:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29628066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asvel/pseuds/Asvel
Summary: After Snape left, Riddle wanted someone he trusted at Hogwarts to keep an eye on Dumbledore. Since the Potions position was open, Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange volunteered their son, Caelum, who was on track to getting his Mastery before the end of summer.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 80





	Why Britain Leads the World in Potions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the discord server](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the+discord+server).



On the first day, there was teenage swooning. Although accepting it as his rightful due, Caelum Lestrange was nonetheless displeased at what he considered unbecoming, juvenile antics.

Having not attended Hogwarts, he gets lost in the castle before the end of the first week. A first-year student in the same predicament offers to walk with him while they figure it out together, and ends up fleeing in tears. He sees her the next day in class (she bursts into tears again), so clearly his decision not to send a search party after her was the right one. 

By the second week, he is drinking the wine instead of vanishing it. 

He considers quitting and laying a curse on the position of Potions Professor at Hogwarts, but in the end, he is not stupid enough to jeopardise the future of Potions in Britain by subjecting the students to an ever-changing series of progressively worse professors. Also, if he failed, that would mean he couldn't live up to Master Snape's standard, and he just can't have that being said about him. 

\--  
Albus Dumbledore was, apparently, quite pleased. It seemed he thought this was a great opportunity for the Lestrange Heir, educated abroad, to get to know his country and his (more or less) peers a little better. To that end, he often invited his new Potions Professor, along with his colleagues, to social outings in Hogsmeade; and scheduled him for village duty every Hogsmeade weekend of the year besides. The failure of each of his efforts did not appear to affect his enthusiasm in the next attempt. 

"Lemon drop?" He deftly avoids the curse that melts it into an acidic blue puddle slowly eating through the stone floor. Maybe tomorrow will be the day. 

\--  
The Rigel Black scandal also prompted the Ministry to send an "impartial observer" to Hogwarts this year, because clearly Dumbledore hadn't been doing his job properly if a halfblood could slip through the cracks. Riddle denies any involvement. 

Caelum made Dolores Umbridge cry on the first day. As far as he's concerned, it was her own stupid fault because she tried to suck up to him. He knew she was reporting back to Riddle, but did not count on his taking it up with the Lestrange parents, who send a howler to him at Hogwarts. Caelum is not amused, and gets more vicious as a result. 

Caelum gets a lot of howlers that year, actually. Apparently his teaching style leaves something to be desired. 

\--  
Harry Potter is now formally Master Snape's apprentice. Caelum gets a letter every Monday, former professor to current professor, detailing her latest discoveries. Mondays are the worst. 

In retaliation, Caelum moves the professorial Potions lab from the dungeons to the fourth floor. 

(When Snape visits unannounced over Christmas break "to see how he's settling in to the role", he predictably starts by going to his old lab to see what Caelum has been doing in it. By all accounts, his reaction to seeing it _gone_ was rather amusing; Caelum is sorry to have been elsewhere at the time.)

\--  
Slytherin house is in anarchy. In theory, Caelum is head of house and meant to take care of the students. In practice, as he understands it, there are now three main factions and they're all getting good practice at sneaking, duelling and warding. This makes them more capable of taking care of themselves, so Caelum's job is essentially done with no effort on his part. Good thing too, considering exactly how little he wants to take care of a bunch of snot-nosed kids. He's already made most of them cry at least once. 

\--  
The Weasley twins tried to prank him. Once. The next day, they came down to breakfast unusually chipper, even suffering the effects they had expected to inflict on him. Caelum will never tell anybody that he graded their prank potion, or that he improved it and sent it back, or that he forwarded a copy of the improvements to Harriet for her perusal even though they're not exactly on speaking terms right now. 

(Later, when they are writing to each other again, they get onto the subject of the Weasley twins. He writes some flippant nonsense about disapproving of red hair. The next time she visits, her hair is red. Caelum chokes on his tea.) 

\--  
He doesn't know this, but his essay comments are legendary among the students. "I’d have used it for kindling under my potion, but who knows if the sheer level of stupidity is catching." 

\--  
Caelum has office hours, but woe betide the fool who actually goes to him with questions. He's nailed his (and Harry’s, though he’d rip her name off the bottom rather than claim a half-blood’s work is a stellar example) internship reports to his office door, along with a sign saying "if it’s not as good as this, then ~~fuck off~~ get lost". His original command was scribbled out after McGonagall spotted it, though the students all agree that it suited him better. 

Instead, the students spend many hours in the library, forming in-House, inter-House and even inter-year study groups. The entire Slytherin common room misses Rigel Black, halfblood or not, because Rigel would have submitted good essays and given them the answers besides. They've written to their parents, petitioning them to let Rigel off with no punishment, just bring him back so _someone_ can please professor Lestrange with their work. Despite all this, passing grades in Potions remain basically nonexistent. 

\--  
Riddle is not happy with the direction his lieutenants are going on the Rigel front. He goes to Severus Snape and asks him to return to his old position. Snape laughs in his face. "I get to teach free brewing to a single almost competent student. Why would I want that ghastly job back?" 

Caelum suggests admitting half-bloods to Hogwarts, so Snape can teach Harry there and he can get out. Instead, Riddle goes to Horace Slughorn and _persuades_ him to take back his old position at the end of the year. Slughorn is a passable brewer and was not a terrible teacher in his day, so Caelum considers that the quality of Potions education in Britain will not suffer too much for the loss of his own professorship, and gives it up without a struggle.

\--  
Caelum’s detentions mostly consist of him ranting on the lack of standards here (presumably "here" means Hogwarts, but nobody dares to ask). Everyone agrees that those detentions are the worst, especially because he keeps comparing them to halfblood Harry Potter. The first time was an accident, but then he realises these pureblood snobs are as offended as him, so it becomes his preferred punishment for them. "A halfblood can do better than this! A halfblood who educated herself in the slums! Do I need to mail her the assignment to show you the standard?!" 

He actually does mail her Ronald Weasley's assignment once. Her comments are so savage that, from that day on, he does it to the worst offenders. The fact that it lightens his grading workload is a nice bonus. Bonding over the ineptitude of Hogwarts students also puts them back on civil terms, which is even better. A student recognises Harry's handwriting from when she was Rigel, and asks him how long he's been working with Rigel and whether Rigel is coming back. The student goes away in tears. 

Harry obtains a Quick-Quotes Quill from somewhere and cracks the enchantment within a week, setting it to automatically write insulting comments on Potions essays. They are still nicer than what Caelum normally writes, but it means he doesn't have to read the drivel his students call essays, so he considers this acceptable. The quill malfunctions sometimes, giving everyone a T. Nobody notices.

(Master Snape gets hold of a student essay once, and is utterly shocked at the exceptional quality. This is easily explained by the fact that the students work very hard in Potions. Nobody wants to get on Professor Lestrange's bad side.)

\--  
Now that they're on good terms again, Harry sometimes visits him at Hogwarts. In her usual style, it is never convenient for him. She interrupts his lessons with an idea. 

"Class over, everybody out!"  
"But professor, our potions-"

Between them Harry and Caelum inert all the potions with a thought, the students fall silent, and when Caelum says "you all get an A for this class, now get out before I change my mind", the students are not stupid enough to argue. 

They become the talk of the school, of course. Everyone is gossiping about Caelum & Harry’s torrid love affair, and a fair few are even writing home about it. Draco denies the existence of any such affair, but his prior reputation in the school does him no favours: the students assume he's simply covering for his cousin. Caelum's reputation in the school does him no favours either: the first he learns of his supposed torrid love affair is the howler he gets from James Potter, and the second is the howler he gets from Bellatrix. He makes more students cry that week than usual.

\--  
Riddle sits in on one of his classes to try to get something to use against Caelum. Caelum insists that everyone in his classroom is either a student or a teacher, and since Riddle does not have a Mastery, he is a student and shall participate in the lesson. (This insistence is also why Umbridge no longer observes his lessons directly.) Looking around, Riddle finds that none of the students are willing to back him up. They're apparently more scared of Caelum than Riddle, which pleases him not at all. He turns around and walks away. 

\--  
One day, Umbridge is just missing. People tread very carefully after that, much to Caelum's displeasure; Umbridge was both stupid and an ass. Most people are just stupid, which isn't a _disappearing_ offense unless he's having a bad day. 

Harry comes by and has a word, and Umbridge reappears after that. People carefully do not notice that she was ever gone. In turn, she carefully does not do anything to become gone again. But she twitches whenever Caelum exhales too loudly. The overall effect is rather like she's on a permanent sugar high and trying not to show it. 

(One particularly brave student went up to her on a dare and asked her what she was on, which resulted in her turning white and running away mumbling gibberish. The recording of this sound is one of the most highly sought after products on the Weasley twins' little black market. Caelum neither knows nor cares about this.)

\--  
The OWL results arrive. Everyone who gets an O, which is the majority of the fifth-years, is absolutely flabbergasted. The Ravenclaws meet up over the holidays and collectively decide to continue on to NEWT potions, which now has to be split up because it's larger than ever. Potions is popular, and Caelum Lestrange is more feared than his mother by the next generation; Caelum sees this as a victory on both fronts, especially as he gets to leave Hogwarts this year. He writes a victorious letter to Harry. 

The Ravenclaws put pressure on their parents, some of whom are part of Slughorn's network, and he reverses his decision to take up the post of Potions professor. (Riddle is fuming.) This leaves no qualified Potions teacher and no way to source one at short notice, but Caelum is about ready to quit anyway. 

He gets bullied into staying by Harry, of course. Nobody else can successfully make Caelum do anything, but Harry argues "for the future of potions" like nobody else he's ever met, and he is _invested_ in the future of potions the way he is not in "educating the next generation". So he stays. 

(She still visits him sometimes, and sits in on his lessons sometimes. She’s throwing in corrections and it keeps throwing him off his lectures, but he can't bring himself to care too much. He suspects she's teaching one or another of the various Potions study groups, too.) 

\--  
The school has the largest crop of Hufflepuffs in history, next year. Apparently the current students have been strongly impressing on their younger siblings the need to work together to get passable grades in Potions. 

Also as a result, that year's Hufflepuffs produce the best Potions grades. The ones with good handwriting sometimes get passing marks, even. Someone works this out, and suddenly the entire school is practising handwriting. This makes Caelum's job easier, even if he can no longer drop people a letter grade for illegibility, so he doesn't protest. He can always penalise them for something else, after all. 

(The students speculate that Professor Lestrange has whole collections of stamps with prewritten comments on them, and subcollections like: T section, row "your grammar is atrocious", column "where have you put your brain". There’s probably a rotating wheel on the handle of the stamps that adjusts how biting the words are, with only three settings, unkind, nasty, and utterly vicious. Professor Flitwick cautions them not to spread unkind rumours about other professors, then walks the NEWT classes through the preparation of such a stamp "as a theoretical exercise." Some of the new Hufflepuffs regret not becoming Ravenclaws after word of this spreads.) 

\--  
One week that year, Caelum gets Harry to teach all his classes for him while he goes on an ingredient gathering trip. Snape is not entirely sure how she convinces him to do a guest lecture for the NEWT students, but he finds them hanging on his every word, in awe at the chance to learn from the famous Master Snape. He also detects a bit of regret from the audience, for not having paid proper attention to Potions when he was still their professor.

"Miss Potter. What have you been telling these children?"  
"I didn't tell them anything, that was all Caelum! Professor Lestrange, to you kids."

(It is, in fact, Caelum's fault. He'd never been shy of praising Master Snape in class. Harry is a little bit disgruntled at taking the blame anyway, and Caelum is amused, and all is right with the world.)

**Author's Note:**

> Collaborative fic with the discord server (you know who you are). I've also lifted a bunny from a different context because it fits (you will probably also know who you are).


End file.
